Justice League Box Office Boosted By Strong Tuesday Ticket Sales

Despite its underwhelming opening weekend at the domestic box office, Justice League is showing some financial fight, as it posted some surprisingly strong ticket sales on Tuesday.

Justice League brought together the greatest heroes of the DC Universe, in much the same way Avengers assembled Marvel’s biggest names. However, Justice League couldn’t quite live up to Avengers; the DC film has been marred by mixed reviews – though they’ve been a noticeable step up from Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad – and a disappointing opening weekend at the domestic box office, bringing in just $94 million, the lowest opening for a DCEU film yet and well below initial estimates, which predicted the movie would debut somewhere between $115 million and $120 million.

However, the Justice League may not be buried yet. Per Deadline, Justice League brought in $10.6 million on Tuesday, which is an unusually strong 41% increase from Monday. Justice League‘s domestic total now stands at $111.9 million after five days, and the long holiday weekend could help pad those numbers.

It’s probably too early for the level of panic currently surrounding Justice League‘s box office performance. While it’s true the opening weekend was a disappointment, that doesn’t mean the film’s a failure. Before Justice League, Wonder Woman posted the DCEU’s weakest opening weekend, and yet that film ended up being not only the highest grossing DCEU film domestically, but the highest grossing film of summer 2017. It’s true that Wonder Woman was greeted with much warmer reviews than Justice League, but strong word of mouth was just as much of a driver of Wonder Woman’s success, and Justice League has been getting generally kinder public reaction than the polarizing Batman V Superman, which had a massive $166 million opening weekend before falling off a cliff financially.

Perhaps the one aspect that makes Justice League more of an uphill battle financially than most of the other DCEU films is its budget. An official budget has not been revealed, but reports have indicated the film’s budget soared well above $250 million amid its extensive reshoots, and needs to make $600 million just to break even. That’s a tall task, but still not impossible. Even if Justice League ends up as a financial failure, those predicting the death of the DCEU are jumping the gun. Aquaman is in post-production and will be out next year, Shazam is nearing production soon, and Wonder Woman – which is a legitimate Oscar contender this year- will absolutely get a sequel. This is not the DCEU’s finest hour by any measure, but it’s hardly the end of the line for Batman and friends.